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  "Detective Terra Watts, Missing Persons, CPD. You're in-laws told me where I could find you."

  The statement was fairly open-ended and Lex merely nodded, unsure what to say.

  "Can we talk?" Watts asked. Her manner wasn't exactly brusque, but she was making no efforts at sympathy either. Clearly she was a woman with a goal in mind.

  At the moment, I appreciated that.

  "Here's as good a place as any," Lex said, sliding over and pushing her chair towards Watts.

  Chapter Five

  "I'm sorry, you are?" Watts asked, her eyes on me, her implication very clear.

  "I'm her brother," I replied, doing my best not to appear hostile in any way but making no attempt to leave either.

  Watts ran her eyes over me, then flicked them to my sister. Lex extended her hands out and rested them on my forearm. "I called him last night. He drove here straight from Wyoming to be with me."

  Watts brought her gaze back to me and let them linger a moment, finally deciding whatever question was being debated in her head. Once she determined I wasn't a threat in any way, she continued forward without delay. "As I'm sure you folks have heard before, the first forty-eight hours in a kidnapping are the most important. Anything beyond that and the odds of finding your daughter go down tremendously."

  My eyes shifted to the wall across from us in hopes of finding a clock. There was none. I had a rough idea of what time it was, but wanted to be certain.

  "Normally in these situations a ransom call is made within the first couple of hours. I assume you haven't received anything since you spoke to our officers last night?"

  "No," Lex said, shaking her head. Her hands were still on my forearm and I could feel them digging into my sleeve.

  "Have you checked your messages at home? Might there be something waiting for you there?"

  Again Lex turned her head. "We don't have a home phone. We each carry cells. I haven't gotten anything, I don't know about Ricky."

  "Do you know where his phone is? Can you access it?" Watts was now in full-on investigator mode, rattling off questions like a cross-examining attorney.

  "Best guess would be it's still in his car in the driveway," Lex said. "I've been here since everything happened."

  "Hmm. I can contact the cell-phone company and have them access his account. We really need to know if anything's been called in."

  Lex lowered her gaze to the table and nodded. "Absolutely."

  "What if it hasn't?" I asked.

  Watts jerked her head to face me, almost incredulous that I dared speak. "Excuse me?"

  Putting on my best huckster voice I repeated, "If there hasn't been a ransom demand, what happens then?"

  Again she stared at me as if I had an arm growing from my forehead. "Trust me, there will be a ransom demand, especially given the high-profile of the family."

  Already I could feel my initial opinion on this woman shifting towards disdain. "If these people wanted money, wouldn't they have gone through the house? Seeing as how both parents were unconscious in the front yard?"

  Watts shifted and squared her shoulders at me. "I appreciate your concern, but I know what I’m doing. Taking a television is nothing compared to the type of money these people will likely be seeking."

  I let Watts continue to appraise me like an idiot, saying nothing. My blood pressure pounded in my ears and my temper was a fraction of an inch below the surface, but I swallowed them both. Her attention needed to be on Annie, not me. "I'm sorry, just worried about my niece."

  Her face softened a bit around the eyes. "I can appreciate that. I don't mean to come off as harsh, you'd be surprised how many people try to tell me how to do my job."

  I pressed my lips together and nodded, but said nothing.

  Watts turned back to Lex and produced a business card from what looked like somewhere up her sleeve. She held it between her thumb and index finger and slid it across the table. "Unfortunately, until they make contact, all we can do is wait. With no eyewitnesses and no leads, we wouldn't even know where to begin."

  Lex's eyes went glassy again, but she said nothing. Instead, she released my arm with one hand and dragged the business card over.

  "I'll contact the phone company and get access to your husband's voicemail records. In the meantime, if you hear from anybody or if anything potentially helpful comes to mind, please get in touch with me."

  Lex nodded, her eyes glazed over as she stared down at the card pressed flat in front of her. Watts nodded once to me and rose, already reaching for her cell-phone as she backed away.

  "Wait, that's it?" Lex asked, her head twisting to the side towards Watts. The words stopped Watts in her tracks, her back remaining to us for several long moments before she turned. When she did she remained several yards away from the table, making no effort to close the gap or hide the trace of annoyance on her face.

  "Look, sadly, over 2,000 children go missing per day in this country. While I'd like to tell you there was a standard protocol for making sure every last one of them gets home at night, there isn't. All we can do is work with what we're given, which in this case isn't very much."

  I could feel my blood reach a near boiling point beneath my skin, but kept my face impassive. Beside me I was expecting the same result from my sister, who instead seized on the volume of children taken. Again her eyes went glossy with moisture.

  Content that her point was made, Watts spun on a heel and stomped through the empty cafeteria. She moved fast, out of haste to get the cell-phone trace began or just to get away from us I didn't know.

  Lex waited until the clacking of her shoes against the tile floor died away before again facing front. Her eyes remained trained down at the table, her body leaning in close towards me. "Thank you for not losing your cool."

  "More important things at hand right now."

  "It doesn't sound like they're doing a whole lot," Lex said, her voice low but even.

  "No," I agreed, shaking my head. "What gets me is she acts like a victim here. The kidnappers really screwed them by not leaving a sign with names and addresses for her to follow."

  Lex winced at the word kidnappers and I instantly regretted using it.

  "You have any ideas?" she whispered.

  Drawing my coffee back over in front of me, I took a long pull. It had cooled considerably, but it was still caffeinated and that was really all I cared about at the moment. "A few."

  "I'm listening," Lex said, raising her eyes to meet mine.

  "What if this isn’t about money at all?" I asked. I wasn't sure of the best way to broach the topic, so I just threw it out there.

  Lex's eyes narrowed, but she said nothing.

  "I mean, what if there isn't going to be a ransom demand? What if Annie was what they wanted all along?"

  "You mean..." Lex began, her voice drifting off as her eyes darted around. Her face quivered as she tried to hold it back, the floodgates finally giving way. I leaned forward as far as the table would allow and drew her into my shoulder, her sobs muffled against my jacket.

  "I'll find her Lex. Or I'll die trying."

  Lex tried to speak, but when no words came out, she settled for shaking her head against me. We remained locked that way for several long minutes, her entire body wracked with quiet sobs. When she finally pulled back, her eyes were puffy and her cheeks wet.

  "What time is it?"

  Lex shoved back the sweatshirt sleeve and checked her watch. "Half past four."

  I did the math in my head, accounting for the two hour time difference between Wyoming and Ohio. "That puts us at a little over twenty-one hours and counting."

  Again my sister closed her eyes, silent tears streaking her cheeks. "Do whatever you have to do O. Just please find my little girl."

  I slid my hands out and wrapped them around both of hers. For a moment I left them there before squeezing softly and rising, the legs of my chair scraping the tile beneath me. "Do you have any cash on you? I need to pay someone a visit and I can
't go empty handed."

  Chapter Six

  Very, very few things in life made me nervous. When you've been as many places and lived through as many battles, both literally and figuratively, as I have, things don't get to you anymore. It's not that you become unfeeling, more like unblinking.

  Maybe it was the fact that this time the stakes were much higher. Maybe it was the images of my battered sister and her broken husband that kept running through my mind. Maybe it was knowing the police weren't going to be much help. Or maybe it was my sitting out in front of the Orient Correctional Facility for the first time since walking away six and a half years ago.

  Whatever it was, I was nervous as hell.

  Lex's fifty bucks turned into three cartons of Marlboro Blacks. I sat in the parking lot and tore into the cartons one at a time, emptying them into the paper bag they gave me at the supermarket. Once inside, they would open the cartons anyway to make sure I hadn't doctored anything and the sight of a haphazard pile looks a lot bigger in the bottom of a bag.

  Don't ask me how I know either one of those things.

  Working another stick of gum into my mouth, I rolled the top of the bag shut and sat it on my lap. Through the front windshield I could see the prison staring back at me, the one place on Earth I swore I'd never go again. I shifted my eyes down to the clock on the dash, another forty-five minutes gone.

  This was going to be miserable.

  My truck door gave a loud squawk as I shoved it open and stepped out, my head down as I went straight for the front door. I'd never visited the prison before, though I'd seen it enough times from the inside to know how it worked.

  A bored twenty-something with a bull neck and thick mid-section glanced up as I walked in, a Sports Illustrated spread across his lap. Beside him was a standard issue metal detector, much like the ones found in every airport in the country. On the opposite end of it was another guard with a matching build and look of boredom. The only discernible difference was a tattoo on the back-end guard's forearm. "Visiting hours are over in half an hour."

  I couldn't tell if he was just letting me know or trying to warn me off, but I didn't care either way. "That's fine. I only need a few minutes."

  The young man rolled his eyes and dropped the magazine to the floor beside him. The stool he was sitting on sighed as he swung himself to his feet and motioned towards the end of the metal detector. With one hand he reached to the side and flipped a switch, the faded rubber conveyor belt grinding to life. "Place the sack and any metal objects you have on the belt. Your boots and belt buckle too there, Tex."

  I could hear Tattoo snicker on the opposite end, but I remained impassive. It was obvious they were trying to goad me, but I wasn't about to let them.

  Not here of all places for sure.

  One by one I dropped the objects on the conveyor and stepped through in my socks. Tattoo watched to make sure the detector didn't pick up on anything and asked, "Prisoner's name?"

  "Roosevelt Hobbes," I said, running my belt back around my waist and cinching it shut.

  In front of me Tattoo cast his eyes to his partner. He unrolled the top of my sack and dug a meaty hand through it, grunting as he went. "Is he expecting you?"

  "No."

  "Visiting hours are over in twenty-seven minutes," the guard up front announced.

  "I only need a few minutes," I replied, sliding my boots back on over my feet.

  Making a scene of sighing heavily, Tattoo unclipped a radio from his belt and made a call for Roosevelt Hobbes. A garbled response came back. Tattoo grunted and looked over at me. "Who the hell are you?"

  "Tell him it's O."

  Tattoo made a face and relayed the information. A moment later the radio squealed out another response. Tattoo pulled it back and looked at it before returning it to his belt. "Go on in. He'll be down in a minute."

  I nodded at each of them in turn and took up the sack. The hallway from the entrance was short and narrow, ending abruptly in a small holding room. The entire room was sterile white with a half dozen round folding tables and a handful of chairs for each of them strewn about. A man in an orange jumpsuit sat at one table on the far side leaning in close to a woman and two small children. None of them even glanced my way as I walked in and took a seat in the opposite corner.

  All four walls in the room were lined with windows, all reflecting the room back onto itself. Behind every one was no doubt another bored guard, waiting for a disturbance that never came.

  Bile began to rise in the back of my throat as I sat and looked around the room, bad memories coming at me thick and fast. I begged Mama not to come the entire five years I was in this place, but she wouldn't hear of it.

  Every Sunday like clockwork. Easily the worst half-hour of my week.

  A door on the opposite end of the room jerked open, jarring me from the memories. Through it shuffled Roosevelt Hobbes, his hands and feet in shackles. Like every inmate in Orient, he wore an orange jumpsuit, though the similarities stopped there. A salt-and-pepper afro stood out several inches from his head, framing a round face with a bushy moustache and thick eyebrows.

  I used to joke with him that he was the black Albert Einstein.

  "O," he said as he moved forward, a half-smile on his face. He was older than me by at least two decades, though I couldn't tell how much older because the man hadn't aged a day since I met him. Continuing to shuffle he stepped forward and extended a hand, shaking mine with the same heavy grip I remembered.

  "Hey Rosie. Thank you so much for seeing me like this."

  "Hell, thank you for coming to see me," he said, motioning towards the table.

  I grabbed the bag from the table and slid it in front him as we took our seats across from one another. The half smile reappeared as he unrolled the top and peered down inside. "Are those Marlboro Blacks?"

  "I’m told they’re brand new on the market, figured you might be able to stretch them a little further."

  The half-smile spread into a full grin. In prison, cigarettes were currency. In Orient, Rosie was often the banker. "I definitely will. Thank you."

  I nodded, but said nothing.

  Rosie pushed the sack out in front of him and said, "I've been getting your letters. Everybody that gets out of this shithole claims they'll write, but you actually do it."

  He was right, on both counts. "You were a friend to me when I really needed it. I appreciated it."

  "It wasn't quite that one-sided," Rosie said. "As I recall, having a white boy around came in handy a few times."

  It was my turn to smile. He wasn't wrong about that either.

  "So what's going on?" he asked. "Your last letter you mentioned you probably wouldn't be passing through until the fall. You look like hell and I can’t imagine what it took to make you step foot back in this place."

  Unabashedly straight-forward. Vintage Rosie.

  "You're right," I said. There was no point trying to bullshit the man, he'd see right through it anyway. "I need a favor."

  Rosie nodded his enormous afro softly for me to continue, but said nothing.

  "It's my niece. She's been kidnapped."

  The old man's face remained motionless, his features like stone. I knew the far-off look in his eyes well enough to know his mind was racing, but he wouldn't give away a thing. "How long ago?"

  "Twenty-eight hours."

  "Isn't your brother-in-law some hotshot quarterback? There been any ransom demands yet?"

  I shook my head. "He started at Ohio State for awhile, but was benched his senior year and never played again. They do alright, but definitely not high-level ransom stuff. Not that a call has come in anyway."

  "Hmm," he said, rocking his head back. "What are the police doing?"

  "Not a damn thing," I spat, the words coming almost too fast.

  "Hmm," he said again, adding, "you'll get that. What are you doing?"

  I slid my gaze to the family in the opposite corner, then along the wall of reflective glass across from us. I coul
d almost still see myself as a nineteen year old sitting in this room, my crying mother beside me looking back in the reflections. "You're the first person I came to. You always said nothing happened in Columbus without you knowing about it."

  The old man looked hurt. "O, you don't really think I had something to do with this do you?"

  "Not at all," I said, shaking my head in earnest so he knew I meant no disrespect. "What I meant was, is there anybody in town in the business of moving kids?"

  Again Rosie rocked his head back, his dark eyes intent, drilling into me. "You're thinking about going after them."

  "I'm not going after anybody, I'm just going to find my niece."

  Rosie leaned in and dropped his voice several decibels. "You've already got five years on your sheet. You do something again, and your next stint will make this last one look like a Caribbean cruise."

  I matched the old man's stare, my face a mask of determination. "She's two years old, the purest thing in my life. Hell, maybe the only pure thing in my life. I'm going to find her."

  The two of us held that pose for several long seconds before Rosie grunted and nodded his head. He leaned to the side and motioned towards the window behind him, moving his hand as if writing in the air. A moment later the door swung open, a guard stepping through and dropping a nub of a pencil onto the table between us.

  Rosie tore a flap of brown paper from the sack and scribbled out a quick message.

  "Take this to my nephew. His name is Troy Hobbes and he runs the operation for us now. Give him this note and tell him I sent you. He'll be able to help."

  Rosie folded it twice and extended it towards me. I didn't open it to read, and I wouldn't. If he said this would get me in, that was good enough for me.

  He also didn't bother to mention an address. It was withheld in case anybody was listening, and because I already knew where the place was. Though I'd never been there, he'd told me many times before. Despite that, it was still very necessary I went to see him first out of respect. "Thank you so much Rosie. I owe you."

  Rosie shook his head and raised a hand as if I was talking crazy. "Just keep those letters coming. I enjoy hearing about your life out on the ranch."